


Tell Me Your Name

by mab_di



Series: Keep Your Wits [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Anti-Imperialist Bond, M/M, Minor Violence, Refugees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-25 19:29:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9840719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mab_di/pseuds/mab_di
Summary: After Bond saves Q's life, he's forced to face the fact that what he wants from Q and what MI6 wants from him are incompatible. When he finds himself in a refugee camp on the border between Hungary and Serbia, he discovers that he may no longer be the man who has given his life and service to MI6. But can Bond find his way to a new future that leaves Q behind with MI6? Can Bond even answer these questions without Q's help?





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a sequel, picking up not much more than an hour after Keep Your Wits ends. But where Keep Your Wits was a romp, this took a dramatic turn. I started writing this story in the Fall of 2015, when the political response to the refugee crisis in Hungary was especially concerning. I hadn't intended this to become so serious, but it happened. For a better explanation of why and how, if you care, you can read the note at the end. You should imagine this story takes place in the fall of 2015, before Brexit and the election of the Cheeto in the U.S. In some ways it's still relevant, and in others ways things have gotten much worse. Despite all of this, the story is still a sequel, and I hope it's still read as a love story. 
> 
> Thanks as always to the talented [sonofsilly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sonofsilly) for her edit. She's amazing. If you find yourself scratching your head, it's probably in places where I failed to take her advice. And thanks also to [fr333bird](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fr333bird) for the Brit pick (and beta too). Someday I won't need a Brit pick. Ha!

“You’ll return to Hungary, immediately.” M is seated behind his desk and hasn’t waited for Bond to shut the door.

“But Q—”

“Q is in hospital for the time being. You’re going to Hungary to retrieve the codes you left behind.”

Bond had managed a quick shower and little else in the time between Q’s removal by ambulance and this moment. He’s still reeling.

He makes his way between the two upholstered chairs facing M’s mammoth desk. He doesn’t sit. “And if these imbecilic fascists decide they need to silence Q? He has intelligence. We don’t know how many got away.”

M levels a disapproving glare at Bond. “And you believe we’re incapable of guarding Q without you?”

“Given recent events.”

“Since you’re so anxious to discuss recent events, let’s,” M says.

_Shite_. Bond clasps his hands behind his back and locks his gaze over M’s shoulder. 

“I’ll keep this simple, 007. Stay away from him.” 

“Sir.” Bond hopes the single word is adequate to convey what he thinks of the order, and sure enough, M understands. 

“It’s unacceptable. You know that. You did what you had to do to save his life, but it ends there. Your…flirtation already nearly got him killed.” 

Bond pulls a breath through his nose and holds it long enough to push past the nauseating roil of his stomach. It’s true. He won’t look away from it. 

“Yes,” he says. “I have no intention of letting anyone touch him again.” 

“Oh? And has Q consented to the impenetrable cage you plan to keep him in?” 

“Sir.” 

“Don’t, Bond. We both know that’s a promise you can’t keep.” M drops his eyes to the blotter on his desk and picks up the pen he’s laid atop the documents neatly piled in its centre. He taps the nub of the pen in thought and then lifts his chin and pins Bond with an inquisitive look. “How many of the people you’ve loved have survived, 007?" 

There is no chance he’s got his reaction—a minute wince—past M’s keen observation. He’ll be damned if he lets M get any further hint of the barbed arrow that lodged under his ribcage when Vesper died. But the question has hit its mark and loosed the rubble of pain into his lungs. He is still and silent. 

“Okay, fair enough, 007. But I won’t pretend it didn’t happen. There was a time we didn’t expect to get you back.” 

“You thought I was dead.” 

“Yes, and you took your time disabusing us of that notion, didn’t you?” 

Bond is shattered. He and Q slept very little. He should be entitled to the sated exhaustion that comes from shagging nearly to death, but the stress he felt—still feels, with Q’s prognosis unknown to him—has stolen what otherwise might have been pleasure in his weariness. Or most of it, anyway. There’s a frisson of something alive in him that wasn’t there two days ago. If he ever gets a moment to himself he may have a chance to examine what that is. But it occurs to him that M has made an awfully presumptuous leap. 

“Why are we talking about love? Who said anything—?” 

“Don’t be daft, man. I have no interest in dissecting your heart in this matter, but we both know Q is not merely a shag. Whatever else he may be to you.” 

“What he is…” Bond isn’t sure what he means to say, but he changes course midsentence. “He’s one of your most valuable assets.” 

“Precisely my point. I’m glad we agree. Furthermore, 007, you are this government’s asset, and there’s no reason I should tolerate you jeopardising both yourself and Q.” M drops his pen and stands, hovering for a moment before rounding the side of his desk to face Bond at eye level. He props all five fingers like spider’s legs on the mahogany and leans forward. “I’ll be honest with you. When you finally rose from the dead—for reasons still opaque to most of us—you seemed…” 

“Washed up.” 

“Not to put too fine a point on it. Yes.” 

“I’m back.” 

“You are, agreed. You are, nonetheless, in the twilight of your career.” 

“Then send someone else to Hungary.” 

“Dammit, Bond!” M’s raised voice shakes him in a way that little else could at this moment. The man is so rarely rattled. 

He turns his attention to M fully for the first time since he set foot in his office. The man before him is tired, and reddening in the face. “I’m listening.” 

“No one would fault you for retiring. You should be in decline. By all rights, you should be. You seem to have resuscitated, though, and as long as you work for me you’ll put the work first. The agent we sent in after you to clean up the job in Budapest lost the target. We’re running out of time to retrieve those codes before they make it to Russia. You still do your job, and you do it well. If you want to hang it up and settle down into a quiet old age, then damn you, go do it. But you will not take Q in the prime of his life, the prime of his career. And I’ll not have you committing any more suicides.” 

And there it is. Common sense. He’s been sex drunk. More than that. He knows it’s more. Nothing he feels changes the facts, though. He takes a step back and nods. “You’re right.” 

M exhales rather more loudly than is like him, clearly unaccustomed to managing the blood rush that comes with the temper he’s displayed. “Good, then. It’s settled.” 

“Hungary, yes. And Q…I understand. Only one condition.” 

M waves a hand. 

“I’ll see Q at hospital on the way to the airport. I won’t be more than thirty minutes.” 

“Bond…” 

“No, M. That’s it. I’ll walk away. You’re right. It’s the only choice. But you have no idea what he’s been through and I’m not walking away without a conversation. You want your asset intact?” 

M nods, appearing to measure his response. 

“He’s smarter than both of us put together. He’ll understand. I won’t have him hurting over this.” 

~o~O~o~

Bond fidgets outside Q’s hospital door, giving a nod to the security detail stationed there. Bond had half hoped to learn he’d been discharged, but it’s nearing dawn and it appears at the least they’ve admitted Q for the night.

He raps softly on the door, not wanting to wake Q if by some miracle he’s managed to find sleep after what’s happened to him. 

There’s no answer for a long moment and then Q’s low voice comes. “Yes.”

On the threshold, Bond is winded at the sight of Q in his hospital bed. It’s only been hours since he left the man. Not much longer than that since he’d been inside Q for the last time, fucking for pleasure at the end, no matter what they’d said to themselves about it. Q plucks his glasses from the bedside table and settles them on the bridge of his nose. He looks uncomfortable, and Bond finds himself entirely out of his depth. He’s never…well. He’s never. Not like this. 

He forces himself towards the bed and doesn’t stop until he’s at Q’s side, his hands resting on the small rail meant to contain the invalid. “How do you feel?”

Q assesses him a moment, taking time with his response. And then he shrugs. “Sore.” 

Bond raises a single eyebrow, wondering if this is how Q wants to play it. “I was inquiring after your kidneys.”

Q smiles and averts his eyes to a spot on the wall. “They’re sore as well. I’ve had—it’s going to be unpleasant for a bit. I’ll recover.”

The last two words are the ones Bond needs to hear. He’s desperate to know more, has to suppress the urge to grab for Q’s chart, to interrogate Q for a detailed prognosis. But Q’s shared the only information it’s fair for him to ask under the circumstances. So he lets his shoulders and jaw ease on his exhale. “I was worried.”

“You needn’t. I’ll be fine. Your prick will recover as well, we must assume.” Q smiles again, this time looking Bond in the eye, finally. 

Q’s smile is permission to let go for a brief moment. Bond doesn’t laugh much. Hasn’t as a general matter for years. But the light reminder of what their bodies did together over the past thirty-six hours is soothing and he laughs now, easily. It helps him imagine he can do this, say what feels utterly impossible—even less possible now that he’s stretched his fingers and his palm over the warm skin at Q’s wrist. He’s done it without thinking, moved to touch. And god, this is not what he wants, he thinks, as he sobers and the laugh dies in his throat.

“007—”

“James, please. Please.”

“James. I’m sure I can guess what M had to say. And you and I both know he’s right.”

_Fuck_. But of course Q would be steps ahead of him. Bond had already capitulated, but he doesn’t want to hear this from Q. He shakes his head without thinking.

“James, you came here to tell me this can’t go further and I’m telling you I agree. Don’t look as though you’re about to start a fight.”

“Did M talk to you?” Bond has a tighter grasp on Q’s wrist now. Q makes no move to pull away, but the delicate bones under his fingers are mute and can’t acquiesce to the fight Bond is spoiling for.

“He stopped in briefly to hear my account. He left with barely a word. I don’t need orders from him to know what happens now. We both know our jobs.”

“Our jobs.” He’s not sure that responsibility has ever sounded so hollow.

“Yes, James. Our jobs.”

Bond loosens his grip on Q’s wrist with effort, and slides his palm up Q’s bare arm to the cuff of his short-sleeved gown. There’s a controlled tremor in his hand that threatens to rattle through the rest of his body if he doesn’t clamp down on the emotions that sparked and then roared in the cell of a room they so recently shared. “That wasn’t work. That was your life. That was…”

“I know.” Q covers Bond’s hand over his slender bicep with his own and wraps his fingers into Bond’s palm, the touch tender in a way the tone of his voice is not. “I was there. But now we have jobs to do. And what I said before, about getting to know you better—I shouldn’t have. We can’t. You know that.”

He does. That’s the thing, of course he does. He simply doesn’t like it. “I could hang it up. M nearly offered to take my resignation tonight.”

Q directs his gaze to their joined hands on his arm. His chest rises and falls with a sigh. “You aren’t ready. And you certainly aren’t ready to pack it in for this.” Q gives his hand a firm squeeze and then lets go. “Have you ever been with a man before?”

Bond reluctantly drops his hold on Q’s arm and grasps the thin rail. “Not sober. But I thought I managed to find my way around with you all right.” He goes for diffident but he and Q both know that’s an understatement. He may not have much experience, but the sex had been a revelation. 

“I’m not talking about your skills in bed, James. You must appreciate the absurdity of considering premature retirement when we haven’t established basic compatibility.” 

He could argue the point. They’ve come to know each other fairly well. That was, after all, the reason those dim-witted fascists targeted Q in the first place. But then, that’s more to the point. Bond can only put Q in danger, and Q is too young to spend his life in hiding. Even if the sex was spectacular.

“For the record, I think we’d be great,” Bond says, because he’ll be damned if he’s going to pretend they don’t both know what it could be.

Q’s nose twitches under his glasses, the only sign he’s felt Bond’s words. It’s fucking adorable, Bond thinks, and he removes his hands from the guardrail before he can reach for Q. Bond observes the rhythm of Q’s breathing in his chest and gives himself a second to indulge in the sight of Q’s mouth, wine-dark lips closed over a sharp tongue Bond loves for all the things it says about Q’s mind.

“Noted,” Q says, finally. 

Bond stands in silence for another suspended moment, trying to find the control over his legs that will take him away from Q and this conversation, and the last two days. “I’m going back to Hungary.”

Q nods. “You’ll retrieve the car, while you’re at it.”

Bond smiles. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving it.”

“Alright, then. Safe travels, 007.”

Bond’s jaw tightens and he blinks over the way that feels. “James,” he says, as steadily as he’s able.

Q looks towards the door and then back at Bond. “James.”

Bond clears his throat and nods. “Q. Speedy recovery.”

~o~O~o~

He finds Q’s precious vehicle in the car park at the Budapest airport where he’d left it. Which is not remarkable given it’s not been three days since he got the call that sent him back to London.

The car is the last thing he finds easily, though. His target has disappeared and his leads have all gone cold. It’s not clear whether his cover has been blown in his absence, so he decides it’s best to remain inconspicuous. Which means too much solitary downtime. 

He checks into the Corinthia because the people he’s avoiding aren’t likely to be found hanging around one of Budapest’s five star hotels. A small blessing that turns out to be. Apart from the opulence of the hotel’s pool and the diversion the weight room offers him, Bond can’t find enough to do. Not thinking about the things he’s trying not to think about is a challenge under the circumstances—might be a challenge under any circumstances, he realises. Still. 

He doesn’t idle, but with nothing apart from dead ends and M feeding him scant information, he’s begun to question whether he’s looking in the right country, let alone city. 

When he decides being truly inconspicuous isn’t working, he begins working in concentric circles around his ghost target, starting with the most distant and moving closer with a charade of aimlessness meant to divert the attention of anyone who might be waiting for his approach. Eventually, a chat at a bar with a Hungarian diplomat who takes him for an ex-pat leads to an unpleasant discussion of the refugee crisis, during which Bond has to swallow his tongue on both countries’ behalf. Some nights later he has dinner with a woman rumoured to be sister to an arms dealer with business in Russia, during which Bond flirts without the slightest interest or design to follow through. He thinks he’s losing his edge, but the night ends with an invitation to a cocktail party. 

It turns out the woman’s brother isn’t the only arms dealer in the family, and even the most casual conversation over drinks reveals what should have been obvious to Bond if he were thinking clearly. Syrian and Iraqi refugees are being used as runners. Men who have little left to lose, risking their lives for money and the remote possibility of escape for their families to Germany. His target is running information, not guns, but it’s equally dangerous work. The man he’d cornered in an alley almost two weeks earlier might have been Syrian. Bond had only managed to follow the briefcase he was after from one set of hands to the next, not paying much attention to the hands themselves. If the runner was from the refugee camp, the way to the codes is through the camp as well. 

It seems likely that the codes he’d been sent to retrieve have already made their way to Russia, where he assumes they were headed, in which case he’s wasting his time. They’re encrypted and likely won’t have been cracked unless they’ve made it into the hands of skilled hackers in Russian intelligence, but it seems very possible they’ve at least left Hungary. 

M thinks otherwise. Bond had had his target cornered and spooked the day he rushed back to find Q. The agent they sent in after Bond may have lost the guy, but also seems to have scared him off. There’s still a remote possibility that the codes went back to their point of origin and that the person responsible for getting them out of Hungary chose to lay low until the heat was off. 

M’s opinion on the matter is the only important one so, when Bond reports, he has no choice but to head south on M’s orders.

A few days later Bond has convinced a British aid worker to get him into the camp in Roszke, on the Serbian border. It’s a two-hour drive from Budapest, so he finds a room in nearby Szeged. It only takes a couple of visits inside the wire before he’s introduced to Lajos Farkas, a Hungarian bureaucrat whose business in the camp seems unclear. Until Bond learns his business is supplying refugees from the camp to run illegal trade. 

He learns about Farkas from three young men—teenagers maybe—kicking rocks like footballs and smoking cigarettes around a garbage bin. The bin is one of the only solid structures in the crowded tent camp, and one of the men with a build that reminds him of Q, dressed in an olive T-shirt Bond can’t imagine on his quartermaster, leans against its rusted, grimy surface and laughs at his friends. Cigarettes are scarce in the camp. 

The men quiet when Bond approaches. He doesn’t blend in, even dressed in old jeans and wearing undisguised sadness that’s part his own and part a reflection of the anguish around him. But he can’t pretend to carry anything like the loss the thousands in tents spreading over the muddied fields have suffered. He doesn’t even try.

“Spare a smoke?” he asks. 

The young man against the bin eyes him. He shakes his head. 

“Work?”

The two who are kicking rocks between them stop and move in closer to their friend. The shortest of the three, who looks a weathered nineteen in tattered jeans and a worn polo that suggest a very different life before the war, speaks. His English is accented but studied. “Everything of that sort goes through the boss.”

It takes some coaxing, but Bond gets instructions on how to find “the boss,” and his name. That’s about all he gets out of them, their voices low and guarded as they talk. He doesn’t push for more. Whatever they’ve done to come into the sphere of someone like Farkas in a place like this is likely to put them in enough danger without Bond making it worse.

They’re surrounded by families of all ages, including other groups of teens. Bond wonders if he’ll recognise these young men if he needs to find them again. As he’s thanking them, a boy of five or six years old sprints from the people milling among ragged rows of tents towards the man in the olive T-shirt, panting and speaking urgently in a language Bond recognises as Arabic. He’s rusty and can’t translate more than a couple of words. The boy halts and yells something feet from where they’re standing and then turns and runs back into the camp, with the young man in olive running after him. Any resemblance to Q is gone with the retreating figure. 

“Their mother is very sick,” says the one with the strong English. “She will die.”

Bond nods. The crisis here is not his business. His work has never been about the most personal of losses. 

“I’m sorry,” he says.

~o~O~o~

Dealers of arms or drugs or secrets meet runners at the gate. So many go willingly to this labour until they’re caught or killed, all the while awaiting promised visas that never materialise. Bond learns this when he tracks down “the boss.” Farkas immediately takes a dislike to Bond, which may be due to Bond’s uncanny ability to alienate petty authoritarians, even those with whom he’s attempting to ingratiate himself. It’s gotten him in trouble before.

Luckily, Farkas doesn’t have to like him to take his money. Bond buys overpriced labour for a couple of days and manufactures errands for the men—boys, they’re all young, teenagers—Farkas produces. He’s not happy about the time it’s taking to get close to the runners whom Bond is certain Farkas saves for the more sensitive work. So far, the boys who have appeared at the gate to run pointless messages for him don’t strike him as likely to be trusted with the kind of information Bond lost track of in that alley in Budapest. What he needs is a real job, or at least more convincing artifice, and serious money, to get a better glimpse into Farkas’s operation. It’s not the runners Bond is after anyway, it’s the people hiring them.

Bond calls M that evening from his hotel, and before he’s even asked, M has put him on speakerphone.

“Q is here. We were just discussing your situation.”

Bond pauses, adjusting the image of M’s office to include Q. Sitting? Standing by M’s desk? Is he well enough to be standing? It’s a good sign Q is there. He’s been anxious for Q’s health, suppressing the need to ask M for details about his recovery when they’ve spoken. Now Q is on the line and he nearly doesn’t find the words. Nearly.

“You’re better, Q?” he says.

Bond is sure he isn’t imagining the responding pause before Q answers. “Recovered, yes. Thank you.”

“I’m glad.”

And then for a moment he forgets why he’s called. 

“Report?” M breaks in.

“Right,” Bond says, recovering himself. “I need to convince Farkas I’ve got serious business. Something that will get me closer to the bigger fish he services.” 

“Understood. Q?”

Q hums in thought, and Bond can almost feel the air Q breathes out over the sensitive line. 

“I can get you some tech that’s likely to impress. You’ll need more cash.”

“Pick-up?” Bond congratulates himself for being able to focus on the conversation at all. Perhaps with time, he can do this. Work with Q. Work with Q and not remember.

“We’ll send someone to Szeged tonight and message pick-up details.”

And then the conversation is over. Bond stands in his hotel room looking at his phone for a moment, picturing Q leaning against M’s desk. 

His hotel has a sauna. His room also has a king-sized bed and a tub big enough for two. Given that he’s alone and having a very difficult time convincing himself this is for the best, he chooses the sauna over his room. There’s nothing he can do tonight, and he recognises he won’t sleep if he doesn’t indulge some of what’s on his mind.

It’s late enough that he has the dry heat of the sauna to himself. He unwinds the small towel from around his hips and spreads his legs, allowing himself to lean into the smooth wood bench and the dry wall. His sweat prickles within minutes, sliding down the backs of his legs and from the nape of his neck.

He thinks about the camp, about the thousands of people trapped mere miles from where he luxuriates in the quiet heat. 

Bond isn’t political. He’s a patriot as a happenstance of personal biography, not any ideological fealty to imperialism. If he believed his work was noble as a younger man, he can’t pretend that it’s worth thinking beyond his own weaponized purpose anymore. 

He wonders about Q. Q’s intelligence could be put to nobler ends, Bond has no doubts of that. Bond’s own skills may not translate to much beyond the spy game, but Q could solve global warming if he set his mind to it. 

It’s not up to him, of course, how Q uses his talents. Still, it’s also not the first time Bond has wondered what brought Q into the Queen’s service, to MI6. He’s never asked, and thinks now that perhaps he should have. 

He ignores the swell of desire at the thought of Q. It’s there. It was there even before they’d been trapped in that room together. It’s constant and impossible to ignore now. He’s succeeded in pretending he’s going to reach a day he can set it aside over the past couple of weeks, but in the solitude of the sauna, with sweat rolling over his thighs and behind his balls, he can be honest that even if he walks away from Q, it will likely always feel like this when he thinks of him. Like he’s lost the thread of the only conversation that matters. Q’s mind is sight. Q’s stillness is an anchor. Bond has never been fickle with the strongest emotions, whatever else he’s been. And this is the strongest emotion he knows.

He forces himself away from the urge to touch himself, the urge to poke at that swelling desire and fan it into flames. 

He showers and returns to his room without a stop at the bar. He is no company tonight.

~o~O~o~

“007?”

“Q?” Bond squints at the clock by his bed and sees it’s past two a.m. He puts his mobile on speaker, props himself up, and tries to sound calmer than he feels. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m sorry. It’s late.”

Bond presses the pads of his fingers into his eye sockets. “It is late. Talk.”

“I thought…I thought you might want to talk, actually.” 

It’s not like Q to be less than direct. Bond thinks he sounds uncharacteristically unsure.

“About?”

“I know you’ve been in the camp. I imagine it’s…”

Oh. 

“Awful. Yes.” Bond is surprised. This isn’t like Q. He’s grateful, though, so it occurs to him he’d better talk before Q thinks better of whatever impulse was behind the late night call. “It’s as bad as you’d imagine, and worse. It makes you want to…”

Q waits a moment for Bond to finish and then sighs. “Makes you want to…?”

“Do something. Something more productive than hunting down IT security codes.”

“Yes. I thought that might be the case. That’s why I called.”

“At two in the morning.”

“It’s one here, actually. And I couldn’t sleep.”

Bond tries to form a mental picture of Q and remembers they’ve never been out. He hasn’t seen Q’s home. He knows Q lives in a flat. He knows the neighbourhood. He’s never visited. “Are you in bed?”

Q’s answer is a heavy exhale. 

“Sorry, that was—”

“It’s okay. I asked for it, calling you at this hour. I thought we could talk. As friends.”

Bond considers this for a moment. Even when he’d walked out of Q’s hospital room, he hadn’t expected they’d cease being friends. But now that he has Q’s midnight voice in his ear with nothing but darkness and abstract distance between them, it’s obvious that the intimacy they’ve knitted between them is truer than whatever artificial boundaries they tried to draw around what can and can’t pass between them. 

Seeing no alternative, Bond says, “Of course. I’d like that.” 

Q doesn’t respond immediately, and Bond imagines him considering whether to call out the lie. He doesn’t.

“Do you want to talk about it? Roszke?”

He does want to, and after some stuttering starts, he begins to tell Q about the young man in the olive shirt who looks the slightest bit like Q and whose mother is dying. He tells Q about the orphans and the dead and dying children, about the overwhelming grief over those already lost. Those lost to war, lost at sea, lost to the insidious apathy of the world to conflicts sown over decades by the same governments that can’t find it in their hearts to create safe transport for the people caught in them. 

As he speaks, Bond realises he is sick with fury. It’s at once diffuse and also focused. He’s angry with his own government. His entire career has been spent protecting Britain’s imperialist legacy, but for reasons he can’t quite explain, he finds himself at a breaking point of conscience. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s the scale of what he’s seen in Hungary, knowing it is only a tiny sore on the ravaged body of Earth where the suffering has become unfathomable. He’s not sure, but he’s aware that the things he tells Q over the phone in the middle of the night are not things he’s ever said aloud to anyone. 

To Q’s credit, he listens seemingly without judgement. If Bond’s politicised assessment of what he’s seeing alarms Q, it doesn’t show in his response. Instead, he sounds sympathetic without saying anything explicitly sympathetic. He holds Bond’s thoughts and words and gives them somewhere safe to land, gives Bond somewhere safe to direct the deepening sadness he’s felt over the past couple of weeks. Every hum of encouragement from Q, every thoughtful silence, every breath of Q’s over the line—and Bond hears every one—reconnects him to the thread of conversation he started with Q when they met. To the way the world looks through the clarity of Q’s mind. To what he feels at each exhale of Q’s, as though Q’s mouth were at his ear.

Finally, Q says, “What are you going to do?”

Bond isn’t sure he knows what Q means, but he suspects he does. “Apart from my job?”

“Yes, apart from that.”

“I don’t know.”

~o~O~o~

It takes nearly twenty-four hours for Farkas to arrange a runner for what Bond manages to convince him is a serious piece of tech. It’s weaponry, in fact. An explosive that, were it to fall into the wrong hands, could do real damage. Q thought it necessary for verisimilitude, and although Bond doesn’t disagree, it still makes him uneasy to imagine handing something quite so deadly over to a runner simply in the hopes of making a connection. There’s a moderate risk that something could go wrong.

The intervening conversations with M and Q are their own kind of harrowing. Bond can’t help but wish M off the phone, wish Q could acknowledge, as he had last night, that this mission is about more than recovering IT codes, and that it matters to Bond what happens down here. He wishes Q would say something that’s for him.

He waits on the road between Roszke and Szeged, less than a mile from the camp, with a boxy armoured briefcase containing the handheld explosive. He exits his car when a Jeep approaches, and waits on the shoulder as the Jeep pulls over. The runner’s escort emerges from the driver’s side first, tucking a pistol into a holster under his blazer. Farkas doesn’t trust the runners not to run. Once the explosive is in the runners’ hands, they’ll have to trust him to complete the task, but Farkas doesn’t take unnecessary chances. 

It takes Bond a moment to make sense of the fact that he recognises the young man who pulls himself out of the passenger’s side of the Jeep. For a split second, Bond is disoriented. The familiar build, the long limbs and slender frame topped with an unruly cascade of black hair—it’s the man with the olive shirt, only he’s wearing blue today. He looks even younger than Bond remembered him. His resemblance to Q ends with his build and hair, but it’s unsettling nonetheless. Bond knew he was handing a dangerous job over to someone from the camp, someone with no alternatives. It still takes him a moment to adjust to this reality.

He approaches quickly, determined not to jeopardise the young man or the mission with emotions that can only get them both in trouble. He gestures to his car and speaks to the escort. “I want to speak to him alone.”

The escort, a stocky man in his thirties who looks like ex-military, assents, unconcerned, but walks them both back to Bond’s car and takes up station at the hood as Bond and his runner climb in.

The runner doesn’t look surprised to see Bond, and Bond isn’t entirely sure the young man even recognises him. They’d only spoken for a quarter of an hour, and clearly the young man had other things on his mind. As he recalls, the man’s English isn’t especially strong. Bond’s Arabic is likely worse. 

“Do you remember me?”

The young man doesn’t turn more than his head when he nods, catching Bond’s eyes for only a moment. He’s scared, Bond realises. 

“Your mother…?”

“Is dead,” the man says. He looks out the windscreen into the distance. “I must take care of my brother.”

Bond says he’s sorry in Arabic, and lets a moment of silence pass before he speaks again.

“This is dangerous,” he says, indicating the small, black-handled case at the man’s feet. “A bomb. Do you understand?”

The man doesn’t respond immediately, but then he nods slowly. If he’s frightened by the information, it doesn’t show. Perhaps he’s already prepared himself for the worst, or maybe this isn’t even the worst he’s handled. The job pays better with higher stakes. 

“You need the money,” Bond says.

The man nods again, not looking at Bond.

“Okay,” Bond says. He explains in English and broken Arabic what will and will not set off the explosive, and to where it must be delivered. He asks if this is the first dangerous job the man has done. The young man hesitates, then shakes his head no. 

The purpose of this exercise is to find out who the runners are working for, to trace the codes back to a source. He isn’t going to get anywhere if he isn’t willing to use this young man. He takes a deep breath before he slides fingers over the top of the young man’s hand on the seat between them to get his attention. He doesn’t look at him, and speaks low, so that the escort scrutinising them through the windscreen can’t discern the words or the shift in topic. 

“I need help. A different kind. I can’t ask Farkas. Do you understand?”

The man nods.

“I’ll pay. I’ll help—after—if I can. I’ll pay.”

“Okay.” Bond hears something like resignation in the young man’s voice, as though he’s been made similar promises before.

“I need to know who the runners work for—when the jobs are dangerous.”

It’s not clear the young man understands. He tries again in Arabic, but before he’s butchered a couple of sentence fragments, the man shakes his head to interrupt him.

“I only know two names. I will give them to you if you pay. I know other runners too.”

Bond nods. “Deliver this case. Write down whatever information you have and hand it to the man with the case, and he will pay you.” 

Bond has arranged for 003, the agent who brought the explosive from London, to stick around as the point of delivery just over the Serbian border in Subotica. As long as no one knows what his young runner is carrying, getting over the border should be relatively easy. He’d had to design a task that was challenging enough to be believable. He’s done what he can to minimise the risks, but it still worries Bond.

Bond reaches over and pulls the case out from next to the man’s feet and shows him the soft pocket on the side. There’s an envelope, blank paper, and a pen. “Leave the information in here.” He describes the pick-up point in Subotica and the agent who will meet him, quizzing the man’s understanding of the route in hopes that he can steer him from potential missteps. “Do you have water?”

The young man nods, shifting nervously in his seat. Bond looks at his profile and sees sweat at the young man’s hairline. “Be careful.”

~o~O~o~

“I hate this, Q.”

“I don’t know what more you can do,” Q says.

“Yes, you do. You and I both know what else I can do.”

“Nothing that will further the mission, and anything you’re thinking has the potential to jeopardise it.”

Bond isn’t sure whether Q truly gives a goddamn about the mission, but he does a convincing impression of someone who cares. Which is just what it takes in this moment, lying in bed with Q in his ear, to ignite his smouldering rage. He bites down over it, refusing to take it out on Q, but can’t help an edge slip under his frustrated grunt. He doesn’t give a shit about the mission. He’s resigned to that fact, but it’s not going to help him accomplish what he needs to.

“I’ll get their fucking codes, Q. But I’m not going to let that kid get caught crossing back into Hungary. The least we could do is escort him back over the border. Return him to his brother. You know as well as I do that making it into Serbia is the easy part.” 

M could arrange it. M could arrange safe passage for the young man and his brother to England, for that matter. And why the hell not? It won’t change anything on the grand scale, but it would be something they could do. Some small thing.

“Could you…” Bond hates the way this makes him feel. He’s angry at Q for not interceding, as though Q has any more agency than he does in this situation. 

“007, I don’t—”

“Never mind.”

Bond’s teeth grind. He won’t turn this into Q’s problem, even if he desperately wants some proof that Q cares.

“I’ll speak to M. I can’t promise anything, 007. You must be aware that plucking two young men out of Roszke when there are literally hundreds of thousands—”

“I know. I know.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Bond lays back in his king-sized bed and crooks his arm over his head, attempting to stretch out of the tension he feels, attempting to feel grateful for the comfort of the bed under him and the company over the phone line. 

“Q.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I do know how little, how pointless…I can’t explain.”

“You don’t have to. I think I understand.”

He hopes Q does understand. And all of a sudden it strikes him that it’s still only been weeks since Q was abducted and nearly murdered. It’s still only weeks since the desire he’d felt growing for Q for well over a year was used to punish Q’s body. The same man is now on the other end of the phone trying to understand him when he understands himself least. 

“How are you, Q? Are you well?”

He shifts on the bed as he waits for Q to respond. 

“I’m recovered. They’ll monitor my kidney function for a time, but with any luck I won’t lose either of them.”

He’s relieved, but it doesn’t answer his question entirely. “And you? Not your kidneys, Q. How are you?”

Q sighs. “Still a bit jumpy, if I’m honest. Improving, I think.”

“I wish…” The words are out before he can stop them, but then he does stop himself before he can finish. It isn’t fair to Q to give voice to everything he wishes.

“Don’t.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right.” Bond closes his eyes briefly and imagines Q lying on his own bed in the dark. “Thank you, Q, for helping.”

~o~O~o~

Early the next morning, Bond learns a number of things. M has agreed to look into passports for the young runner and his brother, whose names Bond does not yet know. That is, assuming the young man makes it back to Hungary. Because M can’t or won’t arrange papers fast enough to get the runner safely back over the border from Serbia, which means it’ll be up to the young man to make the journey back on his own.

It’s still a couple of hours before the runner is expected to meet 003 in the first place, so Bond makes an impulsive decision to head to Serbia. If M won’t help the man get back over the border crossing legally, Bond will cross back with him illegally. He simply has to intercept him after the drop, and hope that no one misses him in the meantime. 

With his car, the one he’s promised to return to Q, he makes it across the Serbian border and into the old city of Subotica in forty-five minutes. Parked at a corner one block away, he can watch the MI6 agent at a café, inconspicuously reading a newspaper and sipping coffee. Bond is tense, imagining everything that could have gone wrong for the young runner over the course of the night. The appointed window of time for him to arrive is growing close, and Bond scans the green square across the street from the café, and the street up and down in either direction, for sign of the approach of a young man in a blue shirt.

Nearly an hour passes. The air is crisp outside, the time of year when even the southern reaches of Europe begin to cool, but the air in his car has warmed and grown stifling as he waits. His eyes track a circuit around all of the possible points of approach yet again, and this time he notices something out of place. Someone, specifically. A man whom Bond could swear he watched walk past the café nearly a half hour earlier is approaching again—not returning from the direction he’d disappeared to, but rather approaching just as he had, from the same direction he’d come from the first time. 

It’s possible Bond is being paranoid, but he knows better than to ignore his instincts. He’s already climbing out of his car when he sees his runner coming from the square across the street, black case in hand. Any relief Bond expected to feel at his appearance is eclipsed by his growing alarm over the man approaching the drop point a little too quickly. Without further thought, he breaks into a run, heading straight for the young runner, hoping to put his body between him and whoever might intercept him. 

The shot is fired in the split second before he reaches his target and he dives for the young man, unsure whether it was 003 or the interloper who has fired. He and the runner fall to the ground just as a second shot—a different gun—rings out. Protecting the runner and the deadly case he’s dropped with his body, Bond looks over his shoulder to see 003 in pursuit of the original shooter. 

Under him, he hears a groan. 

“Shit.” He lifts off the man and looks him in the eye to find him frightened and grimacing in pain. “Where are you hurt?”

The young man gestures to his left side and Bond feels a moment of panic, sliding his hand over the man’s chest and flank. But then the man gestures lower and gropes for the top of his thigh. Bond sees the blood, and although it could be crippling, a solid hit, he’s relieved it’s clear of any major organs. 

He rips off his light sweatshirt and ties a makeshift tourniquet, then helps the man upright, letting him lean on Bond to take any pressure off the leg. 

People have begun to gather. Not many, but it’ll only be moments before the local police show up, and there’s no sign of the MI6 agent or the shooter. The case carrying Q’s explosive needs to be removed from the scene as urgently as his wounded runner does. Nodding to the handful of gawkers, he swiftly nabs the case and helps the injured man to his car, jumping into the driver’s seat and making for the quickest exit from the city. 

His passenger is silent for the few minutes it takes Bond to navigate through city streets to a road that heads straight for the border crossing. He’s grateful for the time to think, because his plan to help the young man sneak across the border on foot, at night, is now hopeless. The man needs medical attention before he loses his leg, or worse, bleeds out. The latter seems unlikely given a quick survey of the amount of blood soaked through the man’s jeans. Walking isn’t an option, and if the bullet is lodged, which seems almost certain, he’ll be septic without help soon.

“Tell me your name?” Bond says, because he’s not sure yet what to do and it’s been bothering him that he never asked. It had seemed presumptuous before, but now he thinks not doing so was a mistake.

The young man turns to him, pain clear on his face, his breathing laboured. “Farid,” he says. “Where are we going?”

“You need a hospital.”

“I need… my brother.”

Bond nods. They need a doctor, not a hospital. With the right equipment, and depending on the wound, Bond might be able to do what’s necessary himself. But he has no equipment and no anaesthetic. Hospital is risky, though. He’s not sure what would happen to Farid if anyone started asking questions. And he needs to ditch the explosive now tucked behind the passenger seat.

He needs help. He weighs the likelihood he’ll dig himself into a deeper hole by calling for it against the fact that there’s no way he’ll be able to keep his involvement secret from M. 003 saw him, surely, as he ran after the shooter. It’s likely M is waiting for a report this very minute.

He hits call on his mobile before he can overthink it and isn’t surprised that M is expecting him.

“Where the fuck are you, 007, and why aren’t you in Szeged?”

Bond rarely lies to M. It’s not in his interest, and he generally doesn’t have much to hide. But for reasons he can’t explain to himself, the half-truth is on his tongue without a second thought. “I had a bad feeling about the drop. I made a last minute decision to observe just in case something went wrong. Someone shot at our runner, most likely tipped off by Farkas about the explosive.”

His version gives him too much credit for forethought, but it is, in the end, fortuitous he’d been there. M will have to concede that.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I’m just outside of Subotica, heading towards the Hungarian border. Our runner is shot. He needs medical attention in the next hour or so, and he needs safe passage.”

“Back to Roszke,” Farid says, his voice hoarse from pain.

Bond shakes his head. “Farkas likely set you up. We need to get you out of Hungary.”

“I can’t leave my brother,” Farid says. 

“M, we need help.”

M curses under his breath, and then clears his throat. “Stay on the road, but stop before you get to the border if you haven’t heard from me. I’ll see what I can do about the crossing. You may have to take him to a hospital in Szeged.”

“I’m not sure we’ll make it,” Bond says, avoiding Farid’s eyes. He doesn’t want to alarm the man and it’s a short drive, but he doesn’t have enough information about Farid’s condition to be sure he can wait an hour or more for medical care. 

“Stay on the road, 007. What about the explosive?”

“I’ve got it. It complicates the border.”

“Keep driving. I’ll be in touch.”

M clicks off and Bond focuses on the things he can immediately control. He offers Farid water, and digs some likely useless over the counter pain medicine out of the glove compartment while he drives. 

“Why were you there?” Farid asks, after a few minutes of silence. “Did you know?”

Bond considers the version he told M and notes that Farid hasn’t taken it at face value. “No, I didn’t know. I thought I’d help you back across the border. I’m glad I was there, but I didn’t know there’d be trouble.”

A few minutes later, Farid has closed his eyes, in too much pain to sleep, but beginning to look feverish and unable to stay fully alert. Given that it’s a leg wound, Bond decides not to rouse him. Instead, he studies the man in quick glances as he drives steadily into the late afternoon. The road is travelled, but not densely, and he’ll be at the border before he hears from M at this pace.

Bond can’t help but think of Q when he looks at the man hunched in pain in his passenger seat. He’s as thin as Q, and though he must be nearly a decade younger, the age difference isn’t obvious. Farid’s lips are bunched in pain, and though his features are not Q’s, Bond can’t help but think of the look of pain and desperation on Q’s face when he’d found him hostage weeks earlier. 

Q had nearly died, and Bond had done what was necessary to save him. But even knowing so, knowing the pain he’d been in and the fear Q must have felt, he’s sick with himself remembering the pleasure they’d found in each other’s bodies. If it had only been sex, maybe the sight of the young man next to him wouldn’t be so troubling. If it had only been sex, maybe he wouldn’t be stalked by regret, the sense that walking away had been a terrible mistake.

M calls just before Bond is prepared to pull over, and delivers the only news that could take his mind off Q at the moment.

~o~O~o~

It’s nearly midnight when Bond makes it back to his hotel room. He’d managed to extract Farid’s brother from the camp after leaving the young man at hospital in Szeged, and now the brothers are together. They’d made it, though it’s still unclear what kind of long-term damage Farid’s leg sustained. Guilt gnaws at Bond when he considers what the young man and the child he’s now responsible for still face. It’ll take weeks before they can leave hospital, and while M said he’d work on getting them out of Hungary, it’s not clear where that will leave them. The brothers could still end up separated, or worse.

Farkas hadn’t been at the camp when Bond went in, likely dealing with the fallout of the afternoon’s events. The best news of the day is that Bond is going home. 003 managed to chase down the shooter, and it’s looking like that shooter will be their link to the network that’s trying to smuggle British codes to Russia. Bond hasn’t completed his mission, but he’s close enough to contemplate an end.

He’s exhausted, and considers calling Q. It’s an hour earlier in London, and Q is a night owl. Except Bond doesn’t know what to say. 

He hasn't called, the decision made of indecision, and is drifting off when his phone rings. He answers in the dark and lets out a relieved breath when he hears the familiar chord of Q’s voice in his ear.

“I heard it all,” Q says. “You’re damn lucky how things turned out. What were you thinking?”

“He reminds me of you,” Bond says, not seeing the point of deceiving Q. It may be they have no choice in this, but they can at least be honest. 

“I inspire you to heroics, I see. Once again.”

Bond’s immediate reaction is a smile, but it fades quickly and he frowns into the dark room. “Don’t, Q. It’s not funny. I don’t want you to think I acted nobly, that’s all.”

Q hums. 

“There are no heroes here, Q.”

Q seems to consider that for a moment, and Bond appreciates lying in the silent night with Q on the other end of the line. Finally, Q says, “What will you do?”

It’s the same question Q had asked him nights earlier. His answer is the same.

“I don’t know.”

~o~O~o~

“If I had intended to send an aid worker down there, I would have called the Red Cross. You’ve lost your focus, 007.”

Bond has finished his mission. He’d even managed to get Q’s car back to him. But it hasn’t slipped M’s notice that Bond showed more concern for the safety of Farid and his brother than he did for the codes he’d delivered. It bothers Bond that M has invited Q in for the stripping down he’s receiving, but he takes it stoically.

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, you understand, or yes, you’ve lost your focus? Which is it, 007?”

“Both, sir.”

Bond can’t help a glance at Q, who is seated in the armchair to his left. Q’s posture is as correct as ever, and there is no hint of an opinion on his face.

M pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “I think you should take some time. I’m placing you on temporary leave, to be reassessed in a month.”

Bond heats from the embarrassment of it. He’s taken off guard. He knew he’d receive some flak for getting personally involved, but he’d completed the mission, and M has no idea how conflicted Bond had actually felt. So he isn’t expecting this, even if it’s not entirely unwelcome. He’s simply not prepared.

“Sir.” He has to pause to collect his thoughts. “I—okay.”

“That’s all. You’re dismissed. I’ll be in touch.” 

Bond nods and rises from his chair. Next to him, Q looks up just as M addresses him. “Stay, please. I have several matters to discuss.”

Q throws a parting glance at Bond as he leaves M’s office and closes the door behind him.

~o~O~o~

The first thing Bond does when he gets up the next morning is to make some calls after Farid’s whereabouts. He learns nothing and stews about that for an hour before turning his mind to his circumstances.

Retirement. It isn’t something for which Bond has planned. M has given him a month, but it feels permanent as he stands in his nearly vacant flat, sipping coffee against the worktop in his kitchen. Time gapes in front of him. He’s not that old. Old for his profession, certainly, but by most professional standards, he should have another twenty years of work ahead of him. 

He’s feeling hollow when his mobile rings, the personal one. Given the absence of the personal in his life, it can only be one person.

“Shouldn’t you be working?” Bond sets down his mug and moves towards the sofa in the lounge as he answers.

“I am. I’m taking a break.” Q pauses, as though he’s waiting for Bond to understand the purpose of the call on instinct. “I thought you might be adrift.”

Bond laughs, the first moment of levity he’s experienced since he walked out of M’s office yesterday. “I am, in fact.” He reclines on the sofa and kicks up his legs. “Entirely at loose ends.”

“I’ve been thinking about your situation, 007, and I want you to hear me out.” Q sounds determined, as though he doesn’t expect Bond will listen. As though Bond has anyone else offering him advice.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Q says. He’d been spoiling for an argument perhaps. “Okay. So, you mustn’t waste the month M’s given you.”

“I mustn’t?”

“You can mock, 007, but you know what’s most likely to happen. You spend the month without a plan, and at the end you’ll be desperate to come back. I’m not sure you really are. Not after…everything.”

Bond wonders idly if “everything” includes what hangs unexplored between them, but chooses to dismiss that possibility, since it’s taken Herculean effort to move on even the tiniest bit from the side of Q’s hospital bed.

“A plan,” Bond says. “And I’m going to take a wild guess that you have just such a thing in mind.”

Q attempts to demur, but he’s far too direct to pull it off. After a bit of _No, well, I_ …, he says, “Okay, yes. A suggestion of one, anyhow. You may have other ideas.”

“Try me.”

“A job search,” Q says. “I think you should spend the month exploring alternative careers—possibly even looking for employment. That way, when M calls you back, you can make a better informed decision about your options.”

“Options.” Bond doesn’t want to insult Q, but Q should know as well as he does that his options, as far as MI6 are concerned, are limited. “You do understand that I can’t write a resume, Q.”

“Of course. Don’t be daft.”

Of course. Q will have thought this through. As with everything. He remembers having had the same thought as he struggled to make sense of what had been done to Q by those idiot terrorists. Bond realises that he could do much worse than to hear Q out. If the man has applied his considerable intelligence to Bond’s future, whatever he’s come up with is likely to be more promising than the vast emptiness Bond saw yawning before him not ten minutes ago. “Help me, then, Q. Is there some option outside of MI6, apart from guarding the royal family, that I’m missing?”

“Yes, well, I wouldn’t dismiss that latter out of hand, but—”

“You think I’m bored this morning, imagine me playing tiddlywinks with young George and Charlotte. Q, you can’t seriously—”

“Fine, fine. I’ll strike that from the list.” Q hums. “Do you mind my asking a personal question? You don’t need to answer…”

Bond has a flash of memory, of Q’s lithe body pressed against his own, of soft curses pressed with sweaty mouth into his neck, of the shift he felt in himself the first time he came inside Q. “I think…” Fuck. “It’s fine, Q,” he says. His voice has dropped and he clears his throat. “You can ask me anything.”

“Money. I mean,” Q says, “do you need it? Do you need to work?”

“Oh,” he says, realising he’d half hoped Q was angling for personal information of a different nature. “Well, no. I suppose I don’t need to work. Not for financial reasons anyhow.”

“Good, good.” Bond imagines Q adjusting a variable in the equation he’s writing to solve Bond’s future. “That’s lucky.”

It is, tremendously. And all the more reason he doesn’t plan to retire simply to spend his middle age puttering about Buckingham Palace in a dark suit. “Yes,” he says.

“I suggest you begin with a list. A list of things you enjoy doing. Things you might do in some capacity outside of MI6. Not jobs, but activities, skills. And goals, perhaps. Things you’d like to accomplish. Pie in the sky. What matters to you, that sort of thing.”

“Okay,” Bond says. He’s not optimistic there’ll be much on his list to render him suitable for civilian employment, but he understands what Q is driving at. 

And then he reminds himself that Q will not be leaving MI6. That the mandate to stay away from each other, while less enforceable if he retires, is one that Q is likely to continue to obey. He’s half tempted to tell Q he has enough money for both of them, but he refrains. It’s not appropriate. 

“Good,” Q says. 

A silence stretches between them now. It’s perhaps only seconds, then ten, fifteen, twenty seconds. Bond wonders if they’re eternally stuck in the space of the unsaid. Having easily agreed to Q’s plan, having accounted for how he might spend the next hour or so, he’s at a loss. The parts of him that sought change in Hungary had little to do with Q, but now that he’s back in London the consequences of his decisions seem all to lead back to Q. 

“Can I see you?” Bond says. Blurts, really. The words are out before he’s aware that he’s thought them. “I’d like…”

“007…I…. Shit.” Q pauses and Bond imagines him pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, contemplating the impossibility of this. 

“Yes? Q?”

“We could meet for tea, perhaps. To discuss your future.”

“Yes,” he says, because the future means a lot of things and that’s something at least.

~o~O~o~

They meet for tea that weekend, at a shop near Bond’s flat. It’s the first time they’ve been alone—as alone as they can be in public—since Q’s hospital room. It’s awkward at first. Bond arrives to find Q seated at a small table in the front window and doesn’t know how to greet him. Q stands and Bond fumbles a handshake that is the most inappropriate greeting he’s ever bestowed.

Q appears to forgive him for it, waving at the empty seat as he takes his own. 

There’s nothing for it, then. 

Bond has come with the saddest slip of paper containing a list of skills and a set of dreams that don’t remotely match up. Now that he’s seated across from Q and has a moment to appreciate his presence, following the long lines of his frame up to shoulders curled in protectively, and then onward, up the column of Q’s neck to that mouth, to sea-grey eyes wide behind thick-rimmed glasses—now that he’s here, the last thing he wants to do is discuss his future. 

Bond realises he’s staring and so fixes on Q’s eyes, hoping Q doesn’t shrink from the longing in his gaze. He doesn’t. Q stares back. Not shrinking. Not conceding a thing, either. At a moment when Bond feels utterly laid bare, he finds Q’s visage impenetrable. 

He clears his throat, pulling the list from his pocket and setting it between them. “So.”

“It’s good to see you, 007,” Q says. “You look relaxed.”

“Please, Q,” Bond says, incredulous.

“Relatively speaking, I mean. You so often have that ‘just off to kill someone’ stress about the eyes.”

Bond leans back and crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m not sure whether you’re teasing, but if I’m being honest, I find this much more stressful.”

Q doesn’t look surprised, but he’s also not convinced. “I understand. Change generally is. It still looks different on you. Less intense.”

“If you mean I’ve lost my focus, then yes.”

Q nods and reaches for the piece of paper before him, spinning it towards him. “A little internal chaos has to be healthy for someone like you.” Q’s eyes skim down Bond’s list. “This is so interesting.” 

Bond fidgets and reads the words upside down, self-conscious in an entirely unfamiliar way. “Which part?”

Q hmms and nudges his glasses. “Not what I expected, I suppose. It’s…well, there’s the obvious. But also the less so. Your list is…untidy.”

Bond agrees. He’d taken the advice to brainstorm seriously. His thoughts, when he was finally able to open to them, were scattered. There are the obvious skills he uses in his work, but also the pieces of himself he’s not exercised in decades. He’s been surprised to find remnants of adolescent longing in unvisited corners of his psyche. Creative impulses. Even some battered pylons of youthful idealism he’d thought long demolished until the camp at Roszke had found him knocking his shins blindly against the stumps of their remains. 

After some time in contemplation, Q looks up at Bond. His eyes appear to wander over Bond’s face, taking him in. Bond feels assessed. It’s a friendly assessment, but there are questions in it, too. 

And then, before he speaks, Q looks him squarely in the eye. “You can’t come back. You realise this, I think.”

“Why do you—”

“This,” Q says, picking the paper up and wagging it in front of him, “if it’s honest—“

Bond nods, because it is honest, even if it’s incomplete and even if he’s not sure how well he knows the man who wrote it.

Q says, “This describes a man who couldn’t possibly be happy as 007. How would you keep it up?”

Bond takes a deep breath through his nose in an attempt to calm himself, and breaks Q’s stare. He looks out the picture window where they’re seated and watches a smattering of dark spots on the pale pavement to see whether they’re rain drops or wear. The sky is the colour of pavement and could open up and drench the streets or remain impassive. He hopes for rain.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—“

“It’s okay,” Bond says. “You’re right, Q. I’m just not sure what to do with that.”

He still can’t look at Q, his eyes fixed on the pavement, waiting for it to darken.

Then the warm weight of Q’s hand falls on his and he closes his eyes for a moment, stealing the comfort and squirreling it away somewhere deep.

“I promised to help,” Q says. “This was my idea. I knew…I shouldn’t be surprised. I knew.”

Bond nods, his eyes open now. “People retire. There’s no need for melodrama.”

Q squeezes his hand and then wraps his fingers around Bond’s wrist. “We’re all stars in our own drama, 007. This is yours. It’s not insignificant. Don’t shrug it off.”

“Right,” Bond says, sitting up straighter, breaking Q’s grip and taking hold himself of Q’s hand. He wraps one hand underneath Q’s and around his wrist, and traces the flesh of Q’s palm with the fingers of his other. He indulges in the touch and marvels at the way its warmth spreads and settles under his breastbone. He sneaks a look at Q and smiles. “I won’t. I can’t. But we need to talk. The last time we were alone together you were in hospital. My future isn’t your responsibility.”

“You saved my life.”

“And what a hardship that was,” Bond says, sarcasm infusing his laughing response.

“Nonetheless.”

“Nonetheless, nothing, Q. It doesn’t make me your responsibility.” 

Q’s mouth draws tight at that, and Bond could kick himself. He’s also angry. He wants to be Q’s responsibility. He wants so much more. But that isn’t what Q is offering. Or rather, he doesn’t know what Q is offering, but if it’s more, he needs it said.

“Okay, then,” Q says. He’s nervous in that aggressive way he gets.

Bond releases Q’s hand when he finally orders a coffee, and they start a conversation, much as they'd done over the phone in the middle of the night weeks ago. It’s nice and entirely inadequate. They skirt what’s between them, what happened, lighting on it only with brief references. Sometimes crude, sometimes wistful, but neither of them ever gets around to articulating precisely what it meant and precisely what it would mean if Bond retires. 

Q asks after Farid and his brother, and Bond tells him that he’s tracked down their whereabouts. They’ve made it to Germany. They are still in a shelter. Their prospects are brighter but there won’t be anything easy about setting up their lives there. He’s spoken directly to Farid once, and there was nothing in the short, broken phone conversation other than a reminder that he himself is part of the problem, not the solution. He and Farid are strangers and Bond has spent his entire adult life working to shore up a world that ensures a gulf between them. 

“Do something about it, then,” Q says, when Bond tries to explain how he feels. “You want to help. Find a way.”

He’s thought of that. He’s thought quite a bit about it, in fact. Sitting with Q over tea and coffee, he can be honest with himself that the reason he hasn’t committed to the idea is that the kind of help he can offer isn’t in London. His skills reside in his weaponized existence, and if he has anything to offer, it’s himself, along the most dangerous stretches of the journey, from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, away from the places of conflict through Turkey and Greece, into countries beyond. 

A large part of him is ready to leave tomorrow. But Q is here and so Bond has spent days desperately trying to figure out what he can do closer to home.

And Q’s not leaving the Queen’s service, so a fat lot of good it does him to hang around. Rather than hash all that out for Q, Bond says, “What are we, Q?”

Q doesn’t remark on the change of subject. He doesn’t offer Bond a plan for his future. “Friends,” Q says, and leans back in his chair, putting some space between them.

Outside the sky sits grey and still. The ground remains dry.

~o~O~o~

It’s more than three weeks into Bond’s leave, and the prospect of committing to the plan he’s been sketching for himself has him pacing his flat. He and Q speak daily. They’ve met at every weekend and on several evenings after Q has finished work. Q has helped him do the research necessary to determine whether he has something meaningful to offer. He’s spent hours each week with representatives from the International Rescue Committee, the International Organisation for Migration, and over the phone with groups based elsewhere, learning as much as he can about the landscape of assistance and the places of need. He’s already arranged a trip to Greece for the following month, even if in his heart he isn’t sure he’ll go.

The organisations he’s spoken to offer far more than what he can. What the millions of refugees streaming into Europe need is money, and for the U.S. and Europe and Russia to find the political will to act—to open borders, to end the wars. Bond has money but not enough. And he’s no diplomat. So the best he can do is be willing to wade into danger and join the other helping hands already there. Hopefully put his skills to some useful purpose.

So that’s it. He’ll go. Q will stay and he’ll go. He runs a hand through his closely shorn hair. M has asked to see him tomorrow, to assess whether he’ll return. Bond is all but resolved to resign. 

If he examines his mind he knows he’s already left MI6. What remains is to leave Q. 

He’s planned to face this without asking Q to make decisions for him, without asking Q to answer the question that is ever lurking when he’s seated across from the man. He’s had frequent flashbacks to the hours they spent on that rank mattress in a locked room where Q nearly died from poison. For almost two months now. But he’s also begun to count on Q as a friend. 

No, that’s not correct. He’d already counted on Q as a friend, before they’d fucked themselves senseless. It’s only that now the friendship has endured, matured. When he looks on Q he’s beginning to see someone he knows and trusts deeply.

And so he’s lost his resolve not to call Q. In fact, he realises, he must see him before he speaks with M. He’s never been to Q’s flat, but he has the address. He’s on his way before he can question the wisdom of it.

~o~O~o~

Q leans against the jamb after opening his door. He looks startled to see Bond, and doesn’t immediately invite him in. Bond hears music coming from the lounge he can see down the hallway over Q’s shoulder.

“Is that Bach?”

“Sonata Number Three. In C major,” Q says. “For solo violin.”

“You lying—“

“Oh, come now, 007. You knew I was lying. I love Bach.” 

Bond leans in, pressing his forearm against the open door over Q’s head. He’s close enough to feel Q’s breath against his neck. An unfamiliar and unsettling sensation wells in Bond’s chest, threatening to claw up his throat. He realises with some astonishment that he’s on the verge of giggling. And swimming under the giddy awareness is his affection, the multiplication of this moment and the way it roots him to a simple joy. “Nothing about you is obvious, Q.”

His tone of voice must say more than the words because Q is silent now, the plaintive cry of violin strings louder for the absence of any other sound. 

“Q…”

Bond hears the unmistakable inhalation of breath. “James, I—“

James. “Fuck. Q. Can we…? This isn’t what I want.”

“No. This isn’t working, is it?”

Bond gives the smallest shake of his head. “You have to say it, Q. I need to know.” 

Q looks bewildered for a moment, as though he’s batting away his own thoughts. Then his eyes fix on Bond’s mouth and he leans up, finally breathing out, “Kiss me, James.” 

The first press of hot lips tugs Bond into the maelstrom of memory of what Q feels like under him, and he’s licked into Q’s lush mouth before either of them has found their balance. The kiss is as sweet and warm as he remembers, but more, too, for the absence of fear in it, for the clear choice in it. They’d wanted each other before, but weren’t allowed to consent to what they’d done. It had stolen something from them. It’s a miracle that there isn’t the slightest regret between them in this kiss. Bond feels the relieved welcome in the heat of Q’s mouth.

He presses Q against the door with his full weight as he sucks Q’s bottom lip in and nips, and then Q is dragging him into the hall and letting the door swing shut behind them. Bond wraps his hand around Q’s nape and pulls them both toward the lounge with breath and soft laughter and kisses passing between them. He’s steering them towards the sofa, but Q pulls back. 

With a few inches between them, Q looks Bond in the eye and slides his long fingers over Bond’s cheek and across his jaw, raising a shiver and coiling Bond’s desire tighter. Then he takes Bond’s hand and leads him to a bedroom. 

It’s dark. Bond has no interest in the room. It contains a large enough bed, neatly made, and whatever else there is to it doesn’t register. Q sits on the edge of the bed and leans to snap on a dim bedside lamp, removing his glasses and setting them on the table as Bond moves to kneel between his knees. Bond wraps his arms tight around Q’s back and presses his head into Q’s chest for several long moments, trying to slow the thump of his heart and the urgency of the hardness between his legs. He feels Q equally hard against him as he tries to press them into one being.

Q’s deft fingers curl through his hair and scratch at his scalp until Bond is humming into the fabric of Q’s T-shirt. Q’s dressed more casually than Bond has ever seen him. He’d hardly noticed when he arrived, but he studies what he can of Q, noting the soft cotton of his T-shirt and sweatpants. 

He noses into Q’s nipple and feels it harden under the thin fabric, enjoys the deepening inhalations of Q’s lungs under his ministrations. He applies teeth and then tongue, and then the quiet moment of exploration ends when a wave of lust breaks between them. All of a sudden, Q is writhing under him and Bond is pushing them both up onto the bed, clawing at Q’s clothes until they’re out from between them, all the time licking and nipping at Q, at his tight nipple, at his collarbone. 

He reaches for Q’s arse, hauling him in, squeezing the taut flesh before he’s managed to get his own clothes off. He grinds his erection into the crook of Q’s groin and hip and sucks hard on Q’s neck while Q makes his own attempt at removing Bond’s clothes. 

Q is cursing at Bond’s stubborn rutting and unwillingness to let go, and finally he manages to push Bond off him long enough to rip Bond’s shirt over his head. Bond’s caught in Q’s dark grey stare as he gets out of his jeans and shorts, and then masters himself enough to let Q look at him. 

Bond is on his knees between Q’s spread legs, Q on his back, propped on his elbows. His own desire is mirrored in Q’s gaze as Q takes in his nakedness.

Q is gorgeous. Bond’s been carrying around the image of his lithe body—long, thin muscles running from his shoulders down to his ankles—for weeks, and now he’s drawn to the sight of Q’s dark cock erect against his abdomen. He’s struck with awe at the freedom to share this fully. He’d wanted to do so much for Q last time, and instead could only do his best to ease the pain and insatiable arousal the poison had wrought. This night belongs to them, with nothing but his own worries to spoil it.

He licks his bottom lip in anticipation. Q watches intently as Bond bends to take Q in his mouth.

He’s never done this, he realises to his own surprise, as he licks up the underside of Q’s cock, pressing hard on the vein there before tugging the foreskin back and sucking the tip in, tasting the salt on Q’s skin. He rolls his tongue around the head and presses into the slit, Q bucking under him. He’s never done this, but he’s had a lifetime of instruction in others’ attentions, and Q’s curse and groan tell him he’s on the right track. He wraps his fist around the base and sucks Q in further, testing the flexibility of his jaw as he opens wide and sucks Q as deep as he can take him without gagging. 

“Oh, god,” Q breathes. Bond slides a hand up Q’s chest and pushes him back onto the mattress, urging him to lie down and relax, settling his hand on Q’s hip. He feels the tension in Q, holding himself back from thrusting, holding himself back from coming apart under Bond.

Which is no good. Bond has every intention of wrecking Q tonight. Taking him apart just as Q has taken him apart from the inside out. 

He sucks in earnest, bobbing wet and rough on Q’s length while he strokes him with his hand. Q’s breathy moans are like a piston driving tension into his own gut, and he trains himself to take Q deeper as he learns the weight and girth of Q in his mouth.

And then Q’s trembling, his knees slightly bent and shaking, and he’s pushing at Bond’s head, urging Bond to release him. “James, James, please….”

Bond reluctantly lets Q slide out of his mouth, licking the salty wet from Q’s slit before he kneels up. “Q.”

“Not yet. I want you inside me.” Q can’t hold his gaze, shyness or something like it gripping him. “I’ve thought about it…since…” It takes a moment but Q looks him in the eye, seeming to shake off what had gripped him. “I want you, James. Just us this time.”

Bond slides himself down along Q’s side and grasps him at the neck to pull him in for a deep kiss, exhaling over something he’s been holding in since he’d last pulled out of Q. He kisses him thoroughly, abandoning himself to the tug of Q, letting go of his last resistance. He can’t pull himself away, but Q is grasping him at the waist, pulling him in and urging him inside. 

He finally kisses away from Q’s lips, from the corner of his mouth up to his ear, where he licks and breathes into the tender shell. “I’ll never forget,” he says into Q’s hot skin. “I think about it—”

“Please, James.”

Q rolls from Bond and spreads his legs, reaching back to pull Bond to him. 

Bond is almost ready to take him without another thought, but the sight of Q’s sensate body in his arms reminds him that there is no poison, there is no command. This is their choice.

“What do you need?” he remembers to ask, reaching over Q to the bedside table.

“It’s a little late for a condom,” Q says, as Bond rummages for the lube. 

He finds it in Q’s orderly drawer easily, and then stops to make sure Q is serious. “You’re sure? I haven’t been with…not since you.”

“Me neither. Please, James. I want you.” 

The sincerity in Q’s voice is unnerving, if only because it’s so rare in his experience. So rare that he gets to be fully present with someone who is fully present with him, with someone he cares about as much as he cares about Q. He focuses on slicking his fingers for a moment to find his balance. And then he holds Q’s gaze as he reaches between them and pushes a finger into the tight heat of Q’s body. 

Q’s response starts as a held breath, a moment of anticipation, and then melts into a soft exhalation of his entire body as he opens for Bond. Bond remembers feeling completely unprepared for the sensation of being inside Q that first time, and now with just a finger and Q’s heat under him, he’s thrown into wonder at the strength of Q’s pull on him. He succumbs to it, watching Q’s face relaxing into pleasure, working Q with his finger, and then two, seeking the gland until Q is arching off the bed and gripping Bond’s shoulders for support.

Q’s long moan is brittle. His whole body shakes after less than a minute of pressure there. And then he’s pushing Bond away suddenly, gasping. “Now, James.” 

Bond stills his fingers and nudges Q supine on the bed, stroking a hand over his brow and kissing him deep to calm him. 

Q has him in long arms around the neck and he’s whispering, “Please, please,” while Bond fumbles below to slick himself up. He bites at Q’s jaw and around to his ear, memorising each halting breath and stifled whimper as their bodies grind and rut. He guides himself gracelessly to where Q is begging him to enter, and buries his face into Q’s neck as he pushes in, consumed with the heat of Q’s skin against his, the sweat at his nape, and the incredible pleasure that grips him at the core as he slides deeper. He’s got teeth on Q’s neck as he loses himself in Q's body, his thoughts nothing but sensation. Through his own grunting breath he hears a tangle of encouragement from Q—“so good, so good, don’t stop”—and realises he’s already moving, thrusting on instinct, his body seeking something it found and then lost when he and Q left that dank room nearly two months ago.

Bond’s thighs burn with the combination of thrust and restraint, pleasure throbbing in the rush of blood from his groin to his limbs. He registers Q’s fingers digging into his shoulders, pressing into his flesh and urging him on with bruising force that matches the bruises he’s surely leaving on Q’s hips as he thrusts harder and faster. He tries to slow, tries to find a space between them, the place where he leaves off. He tries to think about Q’s pleasure, hitting him where he needs it, but Q is wild under him, grasping hard and groaning in rhythm with Bond’s thrusts.

“Are you…?”

“Yes. Yes, James. Don’t stop.”

He squeezes a hand between their tight bodies as he feels himself gripped with pleasure that won’t ebb now until it’s crested, and gets a tight fist around Q’s already slick cock. Nothing about their movements is easy or smooth but they’re both so tightly bound in each other’s gravity that Bond feels them riding the same wave of explosive pleasure. And then Q is rigid under him, head thrown back, as his hot semen hits Bond’s chest. It’s like Bond can feel Q’s orgasm moving through him as he ruts for the last time into Q’s tight heat and comes hard over a clipped shout that he muffles into Q’s jaw. 

His body is stiff and twitching with pleasure, his skin wet with sweat as he struggles not to drop his full weight on Q. Slowly, slowly, with eyes still closed over the rush, he loosens and lowers himself into Q’s embrace. He mumbles incoherent affection into Q’s collarbone and opens his eyes to Q’s chest, to the place where Q’s heart is beating fast under his cheek. 

Q’s hand cards through his cropped hair and he realises he’s completely gone over this man. Has been for quite some time. He knew that. He did. But this moment in Q’s arms with both their bodies sated from a connection that’s unlike anything he’s ever known—this is not something he can walk away from again. Not unless Q insists. He’d never put Q in jeopardy. But he also knows he and Q need to articulate the choice they’re making, clearly. 

He also has to pull out of Q, which he does as slowly as he can, putting the first inches between them, still holding the heat that’s between them in that space as he looks down at the wet and sticky mess they’ve made. Q’s fingers continue to move over his scalp, his quiet hum silencing with held breath at the moment that Bond drags himself out of Q. Q exhales then, and when Bond looks up he finds Q’s gaze hard on him in the low light. His expression is unreadable, so Bond leans in to kiss him, hoping to find a clue to his feelings in the press of his lips and the language of his tongue. 

He’s lost in the kiss, again consumed with the desire to be nowhere else in this moment or the next. And then it ends, a stuttered breaking apart that he knows means it’s time to talk.

Bond rolls off Q and onto his back, inching up so their heads share the same pillow. “Can we talk?”

Q sighs and heaves himself off the bed, his long limbs colt-like as he gets his balance. “Let me just…” he says, heading in the direction of what Bond assumes is the en suite. A bright light spills into the bedroom as Q disappears behind the half-open door, and Bond hears water running. Q is gone less than two minutes, but Bond feels a chill begin to steal over him. And then Q is back with a warm, wet flannel he uses to clean the come from Bond’s chest and abdomen, bringing Bond immediately back to the cosy orbit of his body around Q’s.

Finally, Q sets the flannel on the bedside table and tucks himself into Bond’s side. “Okay.”

Bond contemplates his words but then says the only thing that feels like it matters right now. “I want to be with you, however we can. If you want that,” he says. 

Q doesn’t immediately respond, but he also doesn’t pull away. Bond finds himself looking at the top of Q’s head as he holds him against his chest, and wishes he could see Q’s face. And then Q nods, so he goes on. “I realise we have obstacles, but I want to remove them.”

Q pulls away slightly then, raising himself on an elbow and finally giving Bond the view of his open face. He’s left his glasses on the bedside table, so Bond isn’t sure what he sees, but he looks on Bond as though there’s nothing complicated in it. “I’m….” Q stops and Bond realises he’s holding his breath in fear of Q’s response. Then Q nods, eyes locked on Bond’s, telling him what he had only hoped to hear. “Yes, I want that. Sometimes I want you so much it’s hard to breathe when you’re near.” 

Bond’s eyes threaten to tear with an emotion that might be hope, or fear. “Are you talking about lust?”

“No, James. I mean, yes. God, yes. But I care. I care so much.”

The words matter, and it may be only a beginning, but it’s everything to him in this moment. Bond cups Q’s jaw and brings him in for another kiss, a different kiss. A kiss of promise and agreement. It’s tender and unrushed for a long moment, until it’s not. Until that now familiar spark lights between them and Bond has Q on his back again, is ravaging him before he notices it’s happening. 

He’s almost unconscious with sensation, but Q’s moan reminds him that it’s too soon to head there again, and he gasps for breath, pulling himself away. “Shit, Q.” He takes a few heaving breaths before looking this beautiful man in the eyes. “The best part about this time is I don’t have to get it up again.” 

Q’s lush mouth breaks into a wide smile and he laughs easily. It’s a deep, precious sound. “You had no problem when it counted, James,” he says. And the fondness in Q’s voice is the most hopeful thing Bond has heard yet.

“I’m pretty sure that was a life-or-death adrenalin rush. And I hope to never have to perform with your life at stake again.” Bond nips a kiss at Q’s nose, then contemplates Q seriously. “I’m a middle-aged man. That’s what you’d be getting.”

Q nods and smiles again. “James, no one has ever made me feel as good as you did tonight. I don’t give a fig how old you are.”

Bond can’t help his own smile. It might be a little smug. “So. Obstacles?”

“Right. So?”

“I’m not going back to MI6. I won’t ask you to leave, but I also don’t think they have any right to your private life.”

“We both know they’ll say whatever they like about my private life, James. The question is what I’ll do if they give me an ultimatum.” Q looks up at the ceiling for a moment, and Bond hates that Q has to make a choice like this for him. “My choice is made, James. I’m not sure whether I’ll stay with MI6 in any case, but I won’t give you up for them. That was a mistake. I thought it was the right thing. I didn’t trust”—he swings his gaze back to Bond’s—“this. I wasn’t sure about us.”

“I know,” Bond says. “It wasn’t the way to start a relationship.” 

“No. But I’ll never regret it, either.” Q reaches up and scratches at Bond’s stubbled cheek. “Let go of whatever it is you’re carrying about that. They forced something we already wanted. We win. I can live with silver linings.”

“If you can do that, so can I.” 

“Something else, James.” Bond nods, bracing himself. “You need to go to Greece. I’m not insensible to the urgency. I’m not sure I can continue with MI6 myself. I was young when they found me. I’ve got to figure that out for myself. But I need you to help in whatever way you can, in whatever way you need to.”

Bond thinks for a moment about the weeks, possibly months ahead in Greece. They’ll be apart. He’ll come back. He isn’t sure what their lives will look like two months from this moment. “I only need one thing from you, Q.”

Q nods and sits up against the headboard, clearly prepared for anything. “What is it?”

“Tell me your name, Q. I want to know who’ll be waiting for me when I get back from Greece.”

Q leans in and wraps both arms around Bond’s neck, whispering his name hot into Bond’s ear, repeating it into his mouth. And Bond seals the name between them in a kiss, the name of the man he’ll come home to.

 

~Fin~

**Author's Note:**

> I realize retiring James Bond is likely not what true fans of the series want out of their fic. I stumbled unexpectedly into writing this pairing back when Skyfall came out, taken by that single clip of Bond and Q’s exchange at the art gallery before I’d even seen the move. The first story was nothing more than pure sexual fantasy, but in order to write it I had to find a way into the spy world that didn’t niggle my anti-imperialist, peacenik conscience too badly. It was pure chance that I chose Hungary as the sight of the mission Bond was called back from to save Q’s life, and at the time I chose it because it seemed unattached to any significant news at the time.
> 
> For reasons I can’t explain, a lot more people read that first story than have read almost anything else I’ve written—possibly it’s the uncomplicated pleasure of a fuck-or-die scenario. Whatever the reason, I was tempted to write a sequel when Spectre came out. But then, I was faced with the fact that I’d placed Bond in Hungary in the first story. And I realized I was contemplating returning to it just as the refugee crisis was at the forefront of my awareness, and Hungary was in the news daily. It seemed impossible to write the story unless I actually addressed what was happening. 
> 
> It gave me an excuse to write a morally conflicted James Bond. I’m not well-versed enough in Bond canon to know how plausible such a shift in his character is. I always felt the Daniel Craig version of Bond was on the more sophisticated end of the range of Bonds. He also strikes me as tired out by it all, Craig himself looking a bit older than his years and his Bond having been put through quite a bit more than the average I think (but again, that’s based on far less than complete knowledge of the full canon). In the end, I imagine this isn’t at all the Bond some readers will be looking for. I can only say, it was a version that interested me.
> 
> I had to do a fair amount of reading to be able to come even close to describing the geography of places I’ve never been. There are many accounts and some videos from the camp in Roszke, but I know without question that anyone with any kind of experience with what’s happening in Syria and Iraq right now (among many other countries whose people have had to flee because of war or economic oppression)—and specifically anyone who knows from experience the plight of those refugees passing up through Serbia, into Hungary, and then up further into Northern Europe—will know how inaccurate what I’ve written is. I would never write an original piece of fiction set like this unless I’d actually been there, and even then I’m not sure. Being fanfiction doesn’t make it any less of an appropriative act to write about the experiences of people who are suffering when they aren’t my own, and I can only open myself to any criticism of my representation that those with better knowledge might offer. My feeling is that, at least in fanfiction and outside the realm of commerce, it’s important enough to write about what’s going on in the world, to do it as carefully and as sensitively as we can, and to be willing to hear that we’ve got it wrong when that’s the case. So, I wanted to acknowledge that, even if this reads as Bond/Q romance first and political commentary a distant second.


End file.
